Andrew Moeller will be a senior this fall at Fairmont High School. The 17-year-old is the FFA chapter president, and this past year he was awarded the Entrepreneurship Proficiency Award in poultry production.

At Moeller’s family’s farm, you’ll find a variety of different birds, including Pekin ducks, some African geese, eight peacocks, a lot of chickens and, most recently, a pair of emus.

“The first time I had ever seen them was at the Jackson exotic sale,” said Moeller, explaining that quite a few unique animals, including kangaroos, are sold there. “I didn’t buy any then, but I had been interested in getting some since then.”

After a bit of time convincing his parents, Chad and Becky, he ordered four emu eggs from a farm in New Mexico. They were delivered in the mail, packaged carefully to keep them safe.

The eggs were roughly the shape of an oblong grapefruit, speckled and of a deep teal color.

As for getting them to hatch once they were in his possession, Moeller knew it would be a little difficult, since he had done quite a bit of research. Fortunately, he got a special incubator several years ago that can hatch pretty much everything, but he still had to check the temperature and humidity twice per day, every day, to make sure the eggs were in the right condition.

The incubator simulates the eggs being sat on by a parent.

“From what I had heard, they’re really hard to hatch,” Moeller said. “They hatch in 49 to 52 days, but I was on day 55 before they started to hatch, so I was really worried for the last few days thinking I wasn’t going to get any, but I was really excited when I looked in and saw a crack in one of the eggs.”

Of the four eggs he ordered, just two hatched. Which was good in Moeller’s opinion. He had been hoping to at least get a pair to hatch.

“There’s an egg tooth on the top of their beak, it’s not there anymore, but they’ll use that to pick at the inside of the egg until they get a crack to start,” Moeller noted. “They were curled up in the egg with their foot up by head.”

The pair were picky eaters in the beginning.

“All they wanted to eat was kale,” Moeller said. “So I would rip kale up in tiny pieces so they could eat it. Then they started to eat some feed. Now they eat grass when they’re out running, but I have an emu feed that I mix with corn too.”

At just 3 months old, the emus are fast and energetic runners. Moeller lets them out to run whenever he can, and run they do. Adult emus can run up to 30 mph.

“They’re identical even as adults so you really can’t tell whether they’re male or female,” Moeller said. “I’ve heard they make different noises when they’re older but at this point they don’t. Hopefully I have a male and a female so I can hatch more later.”

Emus are native to Australia and can adapt pretty easily to any climate, which means they’ll do fine in the Minnesota winters. Emus are part of the ratite family, which is a group of flightless birds. They’re among the largest birds in the world, second to the ostrich. Adult emus can weigh about 150 pounds and will be about 6 feet tall.

Moeller said some of his friends have come out to see the emus, and he even brought them to school for an hour one day to his animal science class.

“They’ll live to be 30 years old so I’ll have them a while if everything works out,” Moeller said.

When asked if he will be using the emus for any FFA projects, he said, “There’s not really an emu category or anything, but if I can work something in with them I’ll try to.”

Moeller doesn’t know of anybody or any farm nearby that has emus. He has been learning more about them through research and observation.

“It’s been a lot of fun having them and watching them grow up. It was really exciting when they started to hatch. I still can’t believe I actually got them,” Moeller said.